Huinesoron

Mountains flow past beneath me,
Knife-edged, snow-softened,
Kirtled by winter-deadened trees.

Between them, dragons' breath
Flows down deep-cut valleys,
Mist like a river, riding the breeze.

Then sudden, a green tide
Crashes upon the snowbound shore:
The lowlands flow in like the seas.



The trees are different here:
Painted with a broader brush,
Soft green in the heart of winter,
Lining the roads and long-forgotten ways.

Fans that wave to praise departed kings,
And dark-leaved shadows surging up
To strike as spears towards the sun;
Or spreading, shieldlike, againsts its rays.

They have been shaped by older times,
Sculpted by a thousand thousand days,
Their rows and copses made holy by the years:
Arboreal geometries of an ancient age.



The streets of Rome are paved with gold:
The heir of oil and wick, actinic light
Sparks amid three thousand years of stone.

Cast between the mountains and the sea
A constellation, jewelled with time,
Lets fall the day and rules the night.

I rise on wings of steel, but behind
A cascade of crystal spread like stars:
The City Eternal bids farewell.